[GCP-006] - PASSED - Infinite Garden Trading Card Game

[Colton]

This vote is now live!

https://snapshot.org/#/gitcoindao.eth/proposal/0x0e5757ee29c29f21d9ee02990759c65faa7761f20ed84e529fa5abe0f3a1cfdf

Summary

The outside world often sees crypto as little more than a decentralized casino but an optimistic counternarrative has emerged around the Gitcoin community. This vision, known as the Infinite Garden, reveals that crypto gives us coordination superpowers.

I intend to cultivate the Infinite Garden vision through a fun and accessible card game.

Prototype V1: https://twitter.com/mettahead/status/1630018583458906113

Abstract

Web3 is an epic adventure. Many of us are here trying to save the world using new coordination tools. We form guilds with like-minded travelers, earn tokens, and fight each day to slay Moloch. Meanwhile, the outside world continues to fracture and the internal crypto space faces ceaseless scams, multibillion-dollar contagion outbreaks, and plot twists revealing master villains (looking at you SBF).

Web3 empowers us to be heroes on this adventure, but new crypto settlers are often unaware of this path. Even many experienced crypto users aren’t following the plot. That is understandable, because humans make meaning through stories, and the prevailing narratives of crypto revolve around money, fear, and greed.

I believe that for Gitcoin‘s mission to succeed, it must amplify regen stories that are informative, fun, and accessible to all.

Together, the community has begun crafting the lore of this story. In the project I am proposing Moloch, Ether’s Phoenix, and the Dark Forest are just the beginning of a new, uplifting mythology represented in the Infinite Garden Trading Card Game (TCG).

Motivation

Crypto is at a critical inflection point. Gitcoin’s choice to invest in this project will help realize a positive-sum future for the following reasons:

1. Everyone loves a good game. That makes them core infrastructure for the degen to regen pipeline. Unlike linear entertainment, games evoke feelings of freedom, creativity, responsibility, accomplishment, and friendship. These feelings mirror the core values of Gitcoin and the larger regen ecosystem. My experience of handing out a few hundred Edition 0 cards at ETHDenver also reminded me that our community loves physical swag.

2. The Infinite Garden TCG mirrors reality. Every card has abilities in the game, and every character, technology, and gameplay mechanic also represents a powerful force in the real world. The game will present critical concepts like private keys and self-sovereign identity in a way non-technical folks can grok.

3. Web3 is by nature adversarial. Newcomers consistently fall for the same schemes and OGs can do a better job of passing along the wisdom of past cycles. The Infinite Garden mythology will feature relatable characters and lore that orient and guide new adventurers through the cryptoverse.

4. New settlers are not the only people confused about web3; many crypto elders are still unaware that “Ethereum isn’t here to make you rich, Ethereum is here to set you free" (Vitalik Buterin). Beliefs motivate behavior and it is essential we make Gitcoin’s vision clear and attractive.

5. Public goods awareness needs to increase in the NFT space. The NFT community has an outsized impact on how the world perceives crypto but our PFP frens are generally oblivious to the regen way. The Gitcoin x MetaLabels drop, Creature World collaboration, and PublicNouns projects have made promising headway and the Infinite Garden TCG is the next step to trojan horse our regen crypto values.

6. For those of us already Greenpilled: the Infinite Garden TCG represents a celebration of the adventures that have brought us here–and an inspiring vision of what we hope to buidl together next.

Specifications

Minimum Viable Product (MVP)

This first prototype was very well received by the community at ETHDenver '23:

https://twitter.com/mettahead/status/1630018583458906113

The next phase of the project will include completing a regen library wiki (recording the lore) and a pilot program that tests gameplay and new art.

I have recently dedicated my full-time work to this project with a primary focus on creative direction, project coordination, and art assets for the Alpha Set. A few others have joined to work part-time on gameplay. All work up to this point has been unpaid.

Gameplay:

We’re currently testing two game modes: Competitive (training to battle Moloch) and Cooperative (team up with frens to slay Moloch).

We are also exploring two crossovers between the finite TCG game and the infinite game of crypto .

1. The game’s IRL events will be focused on building meaningful community (starting with gatherings and tournaments at crypto conferences) and real-world impact (imagine the only way to get the coolest/best cards is to take the Greenpill Pledge or hand out pizza to the homeless with PizzaDAO).
2. Long-term, the Infinite Garden TCG should be a bottom-up headless brand. We are all living the web3 adventure and the community should guide how it is mythologized. Governance specifics will be ironed out when the time comes (hopefully we will have improved systems by then).

Bio:

As a Creative Director with Gitcoin, my art helped fundraise over half a million dollars for the Gitcoin Grants Matching Pool since 2021. Ethereum’s culture and values are central to my creative work and I have continued to dedicate my art sales to funding social causes. I have a proven record of project generation, initiation, development, and completion.

• Infinite Garden Coloring Book (forward by Aya Miyaguchi) - 2023

• Gitcoin Creative Director (NFT fundraisers for Gitcoin Grants) - 2021-2022

• Spider-Man Character Artist (Sony) - 2018-2021

Benefits

Memes:

• The next billion crypto users need inspiring and informative stories to guide them through the cryptoverse. Those of us deep in web3 want to celebrate this extraordinary adventure. The Infinite Garden cards will depict meaningful memes and the gameplay will create an immersive experience for exploring crypto mechanics and this diverse ecosystem.

Money:

• The Gitcoin community can propose 3-5 cards to be included in the Alpha Set. For example: Grants Festival, Schelling Point, Passport, Moonshot Bots, Quadratic Lands, Allovi (Spirit of the Allo Protocol) . . . what elements of Gitcoin do you want to see?

• 10-20% of Alpha Set primary sale profits will go to the Gitcoin Grants Matching Pool. At this early stage of development, it is unclear how many cards will be sold for the Alpha Set. The print run will depend on market conditions and which conference we release at.

Drawbacks

The cards and gameplay have great traction, but they may be a flash in the pan that fizzles out as time goes on. In that case, the regen library wiki would live on and we would still have cool collectable cards that raised money for the Matching Pool while turning degens into regens.

Vote:

1 - Yes to $10k to build the Alpha Set (40-69 cards including 3 proposed by the Gitcoin community and 10% of primary sale profits to the Matching Pool).

2 - Yes to $20k to build the Alpha Set (69-150 cards including 5 proposed by the Gitcoin community and 20% of primary sale profits to the Matching Pool + ability to bring on additional roles, such as developers, marketing support, game designers, and business development).

3 - No, do not invest in the Infinite Garden TCG.

I’m looking forward to hearing from the community!

[carlosjmelgar]

Absolutely love this! I’ve been playing with some ideas that might apply here.

Make these dynamic so they constantly evolve to represent on chain metrics. Could be something like amounts raised, number of grants on rounds, active passports, heck - even price of GTC, ETH, BTC, etc… This could be done with a glow or complete transformation.

You can have the contract whitelisted to integrate in gaming platforms, giving another form of utility to degens.

Grantee to grant sponsors can be added to the deck; i.e. Uniswap, Push Protocol, etc…

These ideas would be helpful in pushing people through the degen to regen pipeline and help the presence grow.

[Colton]

Love those ideas! Sounds similar to another flow I sketched out:

[owocki]

Hi from Supermodular!

Just wanted to give ppl a heads up that we’ve been prototyping a QF card game with @McKennedy . It was one of the new form factors for QF I presented at ETHDenver.

The idea behind this deck is to make it really easy to speedrun QF in a fun game like environment.

How does it work? I’m so glad you asked!

Step 0a: Each player receives 15 cards from the deck.

Step 0b: Each player can play matching pool cards.

Step 0c: Players can attach grants to matching pools.

(Each player has a color for their grant)

Step 1: The game begins. Player can play “contribution cards” to any grant, face down.

Step 2: Anyone with a passport card can challenge those contributions.

Step 2b: Upon challenge, those cards are flipped over.

If no sybil attackers, the challenger loses a turn.

If sybil attackers, the contributor loses a turn and the cards go into discard pile.

Repeat until the game is over. Then add up the scores. Winner has the most points.

---

Why is this game important?

Gitcoin Grants rounds 1 - 15 is in a quarterly OODA Loop where it iterates along:

1. Observe => Orient => Decide => Act => (repeat)
2. Listen to market/data => Tweak mechanism design => Deploy a new round => (repeat)

What if it could spin the OODA loop faster? And have some fun doing it? (and make some revenue by selling this game in our swag store?)

Instead of quarterly OODA loops, what if we could have a 30 minute OODA Loop where we design/implement new mechanism designs (and therefore search the design space faster).

The cards come with blank “sybil defense mechanism rule cards” and also “scoring algorithm cards”, which in theory should make it very easy to design new mechanisms and test them.

Summary

0. Public goods are good.
1. I’m prototyping a QF card game with @McKennedy
2. We might sell the card game on the supermodular store.
3. @Colton if Gitcoin doesnt fund the GCP, maybe we could combine McKennedy/my game mechanics with your art. And we’ll fund that work + sell the decks on the supermodular swag store.
4. The faster we can explore the QF/coordination design space the better!

[DisruptionJoe]

I’d absolutely vote to support option 1.

The community loves the work Colton has done in the past. This offer is a win-win for Gitcoin and Colton in that the pricing is reasonable and the impact potential is huge. His work has catalyzed way more into our multi-sig than it has taken out in the past.

This proposal is deserving of support imho.

One Caveat - The DAO is trying to figure out how to decentralize more input into spending. Workstreams requiring high context and low turnover will have longer budget lengths and there will be less workstreams. The emergent work does not yet have a total budget allocated. I would understand if we wanted to include this within the broader scope of “how much are we willing to spend on emergent work this season”, however, I’d much prefer us to support this and figure out the max budget after.

[DisruptionJoe]

It would be really cool if the DAO was to approve $100k per quarter for spreading the lore. You, Colton, and a few others who contributed to Moonshot bots, sacks, and Metalabel could be the eligibility criteria judges, then the community could allocate using QF each season. or something like that!

[hbesso31]

I’ll vote for 1 too.

I am curious of how we can combine the IRL challenges that we have in urbanika.notion.site and the IG cards. It would be great to add interoperability between initiatives that are already educating and challenging people to make an impact

[Colton]

I had a conversation with McKennedy earlier this week. The QF card game and Infinite Garden game are quite different and I would like to see both projects thrive!

Let’s keep this door open while we see how the GCP does.

[Colton]

+1

Elliott from Global Unity has been involved with this project since Denver and I had a conversation with Magenta from Bloom Network last week. Both have projects that are seeking to incentives irl impact.

Perhaps all these composable pieces can fit together!

[jengajojo]

Absolutely love the idea and the visuals are fantastic, I’d vote for option 1. Any thoughts on a Nouns style auction mechanism with the ‘card art’ to fund this project?

[ale.k]

Big +1.

Love the mechanism of community-proposed cards to drive hype.

Curious if the funding requested includes:

1. any formal marketing spend (ad placement, etc)?
2. a physical distributor/printer who you’ve already scoped/understand unit economics on (not sure what the term is here for game-publisher, out of my depth…)?

[Colton]

Thanks! Nouns is one of the most elegant projects on the block. The trick is starting off with a bang. If the first one doesn’t sell for a lot of ETH the project will likely struggle. PublicNouns is working through this now.

I would like to see this project build an audience first, then embrace the Nouns model when the time is right.

[Colton]

Thanks!

1. Traditional marketing would likely burn the whole budget so IMO it makes sense to take a more creative and grassroots approach. The highest leverage opportunity I see is activating values-aligned people and projects to spread the word. We could incentives them by representing their projects as cards. For example, Kernel and Giveth should be represented and it would be a win/win for their communities to tweet about the cards.

2. I used makeplayingcards.com for the first prototype and the quality was top-notch for a reasonable price. Prices go down quickly as more cards are bought.

[kyle]

Thank you so much for proposing this @Colton! The ethos behind the genesis, the intended outcomes are all amazing and while I was reading, I wondered how can I get involved?

I am highly supportive of the proposal, will probably vote for option 1 to start, but this is mostly because of the desire to better understand the gameplay mechanics before committing to much.

I try to play games frequently with my son, and knowing that I can share this lore and story with him in a (hopefully) simple gameplay that reinforces why we are advancing our purpose deeply resonates.

Yes, please let’s keep this work going! If you are willing, I would love to personally contribute to the process too. Perhaps I can ping you offline in how I can support?

One minor aside - Do you have any Alpha decks available for purchase yet too (the ones you handed out at Eth Denver)?

[Colton]

Thanks Kyle! I sent you a dm. Looking forward to building a fun game for you and your son

And for anyone else wondering about the Edition 0 decks, I don’t have any left but you can join this group for updates on future availability Telegram: Join Group Chat

[M0nkeyFl0wer]

This is so dope! Cant wait to see this done. What kind of card stock are you planning to use? It would be cool if the physical cards were made with cardistry in mind, in other words how they feel and look when shuffled in intersting ways. Check out this post for some examples. Non-Standard Playing Cards: A New Standard for Cardistry

I agree with the comments of all our fellow travellers in the quadratic lands in this thread and wanted to add a fidgety card jugglers perspective.

There are companies that specialize in making quality cards of these kinds. Here is one popular options.

Custom Playing Cards Printing Game Design Company

[Colton]

Thanks Ben! Cardistry is mesmerizing.

I used makeplayingcards for the Edition 0 cards. Very happy with the quality.

[azeem]

Appreciate you proposing this @Colton. I’d say Option 1 from my end and definitely support this.

I feel a lot of the work that you’re doing is something the ecosystem honestly needs, and I believe you’re the right person to do it.

Also, the stuff that I’ve seen so far is amazing, and would love to continue seeing that come out. And definitely let me know once things are up for sale. Would love to buy stuff.

[Viriya]

Really love this concept and was left wondering “where can I vote?” – looks like you need some more comments so I’ll say it here publicly that I support option 1.

Your creations are epic and your focus on nurturing our lore and the lore of the collective regen space is something that everyone can enjoy. It’s totally worth worth investing in.

[anneconnelly]

I love Colton’s artwork - definitely would vote for option 1